El Acebo — Ponferrada — Cacabelos — Trabadelo

We hiked down out of the mountains through one town that was ancient and falling apart, and another town, Molinaseca, an upscale tourist town with a beautiful river and bridge. We had a wonderful lunch in that town in a cheap restaurant that provided us with a great fine dining experience.

a dream house for sale

woman in the middle of nowhere picking chestnuts

Molinaseca bridge — as beautiful as they come

Through a steep section Ted slipped with no damage done and Karen was telling us to take small steps going down hill. I was telling her I didn’t need her instruction on how to go downhill, when I slipped myself and landed backwards on my pack. That is a typical thing for me: ignore sensible advice and pay the consequences.

The day finished with a hike through the outskirts of Ponferrada (iron bridge), which was difficult because of the increased traffic, the hard pavement, and the delapidated apartment buildings lining mile after mile of roadway. The town of Ponferrada itself was somewhat more interesting, particularly a castle built by the Knights Templar before they were chased down by the French Army (the King of France was deeply in debt to them), captured, and tortured. We stayed in a hotel by the soccer stadium, rather dank and wet.

Knights Templar castle at Ponferrada

a couple of Knights Templar

castle at night

The next day we headed out of Ponferrada, walking along the edge of a city park. We decided to walk closer to a river, which caused a lot of consternation for local people, who could see we were off the Camino trail. One lady with a dog, obviously limited in English, kept staring at us and following us without working up the courage to point us in another direction. We walked across a bridge with the intention of walking by the river, and another Spanish gentleman intervened, talked to us animatedly in Spanish, and set out to lead us in a roundabout way back to the Camino. His route was greatly disturbing to another Spanish woman, who got into a heated argument with him about the direction he was taking us, and we subsequently had our doubts as well. That lady followed us for a bit, making sure he was well intentioned. Eventually we did circle around to reconnect to the Camino, and in the process it became apparent the man was trying to redirect us away from a gypsy camp by the river that we would have walked through if we had followed our original plan.

Concerned citizen leads us away from a gypsy camp.

Today we started going gradually uphill, approaching our last big mountain range before reaching Santiago. We also passed the three quarter mark for our walk. There were a number of pilgrims on this leg, either a wave of people catching up to us or others just starting out from Ponferrada. People really are free to start the Camino at any point. The walk today was next to a large highway for much of the way, but on the other side of us there was a forested stream, so we were rather strangely caught between the modern and the natural.

Many of the sleeping possibilities in this town are now closed for the season, so we had to scramble a bit to find shelter. We had another great dinner with red wine tonight.

Tomorrow we head further up the last mountain range we need to cross.